Lavatory Review: The Surfliner

My very first usage of the toidy on a train was back in 1986 when my buddy Shalom and I were traveling from Albany to Atlanta. We ultimately went on to Ft. Lauderdale, though the balance of that trip was by bus. The review of amenities on that road-based conveyance are for a different time. Let me just suggest that it was totally and completely upsetting. The bathroom on our 24 hour choo choo trip from Albany to Atlanta on the other hand was quite pleasant. It was an older train and there was even a small cordoned off lounge area at the end of our car where we lit Hanukkah candles. They were actually birthday candles, but it was about fulfilling the ritual. We used the bathroom to light other things. "Piksher yerself on a train in a stashun . . "

About a week ago I had the pleasure of taking the Surfliner from Los Angeles to Oceanside, Ca. This was a vista, double-decker train car. The seats reclined very nicely and there was even a 120V outlet at the seat. I wish I'd have known this since I would have brought my iPod to charge - having noticed it was dead before I departed, I left the thing at home. Anyhow after a couple cans of Pepsi I needed to access the grand throne. I just realized that this has the set-up and feel of a Penthouse Forum article, so let me assure you that it's only about the subject at hand. Not that I've read Penthouse Forum. Not recently, at least. We've all experienced puberty. No winky winky on my blog.

Anyhow I descended the stairs in Car #2 and found the restroom at the bottom of the steps. The doorway was a curved, sliding-on-a-track jobby, which when unlatched revealed a surprisingly spacious and sparkling interior. The floor was unfortunately made of linoleum, and that would automatically downgrade the level of quality in any bathroom, regardless. The pattern was unassuming; that quasi-mosaic pattern you see in lots of people's homes. It was curling where the floor met the wall, and again I have to say in such a form of transportation that a metal or solid plastic floor would be greatly preferable. I do understand that other materials might be heavier and that weight is certainly watched closely where fuel costs are involved. In this case I was willing to overlook the surface beneath my feet. The toilet was much like those found on any commercial airplane. I've not been on a private jet so for all I know they have porcelain thrones with warm water bidets. Upon flushing it made a sweeping suction sound which I have heretofore only associated with pressurized high altitude travel, and so my supposition that the suction thing actually had something to do with flying at 37,000 feet may have just been rendered incorrect. I have been known to be wrong occasionally. Very rarely. Sometimes.

The soap dispenser, too like a Southwest jet, was positioned at an angle just above the basin. It offered a nicely scented cream, though the variety of fragrance was not memorable. The sink had hot and cold water handles, and surprises of surprises - there was an electric hand drier! I was amazed, and yet when you consider the costs, it's probably cheaper to operate something like that than it is to deal with the waste and fuss of all those paper towels. Where are you gonna throw all that paper on a long trip? What, dump it off the train indiscriminately in a field or something? This all made sense. Someone had his or her thinking cap on when this service room was designed.

Later on the train, some folks were watching a DVD of some TV show on their computer. I wanted to steal the computer. But they looked like they were in a gang or probably knew gang members or something so they probably would have killed me. I didn't know that gang people took the Surfliner. Gang People. Boo.

Another train bathroom was one I used when traveling between Budapest and Krakow. At least it used to be a bathroom. It was more like a booth with a hole or something. It looked like someone very angry had decided to take a baseball bat and maybe an axe to it some years before, and whichever government just didn't have the funds to rehabilitate the damn thing. That whole train trip was another thing entirely. There was barely anywhere to sit, and awakening at 5 a.m to someone in a thick accent shouting "Auschwitz! Auschwitz!" was just not my idea of a happy morning.

The Surfliner bathroom gets a solid rating (no pun intended) of 3 rolls of toilet paper.

Happiness at least.

A Pop, a Prick and a Whole lot of Blood

Horrors of horrors. Brentwood's claim to fame heretofore (at least in my mind) has been in connection with the slaying of Nicole Brown Simpson and her boyfriend whose name escapes me at the moment. Was it Ron something? Oh yes, and Ben and Jerry's on San Vicente, along with late night walks with my wife that we used to take up there some years ago. Anyhow, so my friend was walking down Wilshire Boulevard near his office during busy mid-day traffic and CRACK, he heard something strange. A moment later he looked down and saw a blood spot in his pants, somewhere north of his knee. He immediately thought "I've been shot," and then tried pulling up his pants cuff to reveal the wound. He quickly realized that he would need to lower his trousers to examine it so began running toward his office building, and his car in the parking garage below. When he finally got a look it didn't appear too serious, but he drove himself to Cedars Sinai. He'd been shot, drive-by style with a b-b gun. Just weird, no? Apparently another guy had been shot, but the other victim was lucky to be toting business cards in his shirt pocket which blocked the shot from breaching his skin. My friend will have a b-b lodged in his thigh muscle henceforth.

So his wife telephoned mine and they rather seamlessly implemented a child-care plan, just to situate the kids until such time as we knew all was back to semi-normality. Yeah, normal. A guy's flesh is pierced by a projectile in broad daylight on a major metropolitan thoroughfare with no apparent rhyme or reason. Normal? My wife and his were joking "this now concludes the Los Angeles portion of our lives," as if to say 'okay, we're outta here." I have to say that although my logical mind (yes, sometimes it rears it's boring head) sees this as random, there's something more creepy about it lurking in my irrational blogger head. This somehow straddles the line between random and, well, not.

The pinprick focus of events; the confluence of occurrences and incidents and accidents and intentions - all makes me feel very out of control. Perhaps the shmuck who fired that b-b at my buddy's leg yesterday was attempting to arrest control in his or her world (why do I assume that a "his" did this?) Maybe he was out on parole but couldn't resist the urge to just be naughty. Or maybe my friend's kippa was just too offensive to him and he had to assert his dominance as a whatever over him at that moment. Or perhaps this was a trial run for some bizarre, upcoming mass shooting spree, Washington DC style. Perhaps Al Qaeda has turned to b-b attacks in Los Angeles. Seems they haven't found the West Coast on any map yet, but I should probably be counting my blessings. They certainly know where the London Tube is.

Utter pandemonium across the pond. People turned toward walls, weeping on cell phones. Smoke rises from an Underground stairwell. The smell of burnt rubber and hair and flesh fill a tunnel. Lives lost. Families lost. Property ruined. A bus is ripped apart like a cardboard happy-meal prize. Fingers in trees. Spouses and lovers forever separated. Moms and dads who will never see their children again. Businesses damaged. The leader of the world's most powerful nation seems to not be able to ride his bicycle and tumbles off - right into a policeman. Sorry, but that last one's kinda funny.

It's easy to pop a human being. I've heard casual banter among gangsters on the streets of Los Angeles referring to shooting as "popping" someone. That's the sound of the gun? Or is it the fact that each of us is kind of like a balloon filled with stuff that just pops when you prick it? Tens of thousands are popped in Iraq. A bus explodes in Jerusalem or London. pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop pop My friend has a hole in his leg. Pop. That word seems to undervalue all the things which occur in its wake. It's not nice to reduce all those important, sacred and beloved things to a three-letter pop, is it. It belittles the suffering and the worries and chaos left in its wake.

Last night I felt a whole other sensation regarding the impact of Nasa's little probe on Comet Temple 1. It was a big pop. More like a smash or a boom, probably. We're touching other worlds, and in the meantime our own is falling apart. Eighty three million miles away. Everything we've ever known, cared about or thought about is after all just a star from far away. Sinai, Hiroshima, and the birth of my daughter. A pinprick of light. Some little bacteria on my friend's leg experienced his host's b-b shooting as a major cataclysm. George Bush should remember that he's just a prick on pinprick.